This week on Maker Update, remaking a vintage electroluminescent display, a new family of Arduino Nano boards, humans controlling humans, printing a collapsible lightsaber, a drum cube, and a look at Maker Faire Bay Area.

++Show Notes++

-=Project of the Week=-

Apollo DSKY Display Replica by Ben Krasnow
https://github.com/benkrasnow/DSKY_EL_replica

Hackaday take
https://hackaday.com/2019/05/19/ben-krasnow-makes-a-dsky/

-=News=-

Arduino Unveils New Family of Nano Boards
https://makezine.com/2019/05/17/arduino-unveils-new-nano-family-of-boards/
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/new-products

-=More Projects=-

Human Controller 1 by Takashi Kaburagi
https://media.dmm-make.com/item/4199/

Human Controller 2 by Takashi Kaburagi
https://media.dmm-make.com/item/4203/

Collapsing Pirate Sword (Print in Place) by 3DPRINTINGWORLD
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3597069

Collapsing Lightsaber (Print in Place) by 3DPRINTINGWORLD
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3604015

Collapsing Lightsaber (Removable Blade) by 3DPRINTINGWORLD
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3606120

DrumCube, an Arduino Robot Drummer By FrancoMolina
https://www.instructables.com/id/DrumCube-an-Arduino-Robot-Drummer/

-=Tools/Tips=-

Saw Blades overview by I Like to Make Stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpN-E69jkso

Sean Michael Ragan interview on Cool Tools
https://kk.org/cooltools/sean-michael-ragan-author-and-former-editor-of-make/

Sophy Wong interview on Tested
https://www.tested.com/art/makers/876005-sophy-wongs-wearable-tech-projects/

Tips, Tools and Shop Tales #2
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/garethbranwyn/issues/gareth-s-tips-tools-and-shop-tales-issue-2-177906

Dremel Versa Tip Precision Butane Soldering Torch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX6mpdnd8Co

-=Digi-Key Spotlight=-

A Look at Maker Faire Bay Area 2019

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, remaking a vintage electroluminescent display, a new family of Arduino Nano boards, humans controlling humans, printing a collapsible lightsaber, a drum cube, and a look at Maker Faire Bay Area.

Hey everybody! I’m Donald Bell, and welcome to another Maker Update. I hope everybody’s doing awesome. I had a great time at Maker Faire Bay Area last weekend and saw a bunch of amazing projects. I’ll show you some of those in another video, but right now, let’s take a look at the project of the week.

As some of you know, I’m a sucker for unique or anachronistic display technologies — split-flap, flip-dot, nixie tube, you name it. This one from Ben Krasnow takes the cake. It’s a reproduction of an Apollo-era electroluminescent display known as a DSKYdisplay, and it’s a thing of glowing green beauty.

As a non-engineer, I’m not going to pretend to understand how he pulled it off, but Ben goes over every detail in his 28-minute video — from preparing the conductive glass, to silkscreening conductive ink for each element, and the logic behind the display board and the driver board and all of the many, many bugs he encountered along the way.

My favorite part, though, which I could somewhat grasp, is how he was able to transform a single pane of glass into a multi segment display.

The glass itself is a special glass coated on both sides with conductive indium tin oxide. The back is then coated with a dielectric, and then the pattern for each illuminated element is silkscreened on using conductive ink from Bare Conductive. A PCB with the same pattern of character segments lays behind that, driving each segment with 300 volts.

In addition to the video, Ben has a Github page with the PCB design files, firmware, and graphics, all available for download. It’s incredible. Way beyond me, but I love knowing that projects like this are possible.

It’s time for some news. Arduino has announced a new line of Arduino Nano boards due out mid-June.

The new Nano family includes four boards. The entry level is the Nano Every, affordably priced at $9.90. Then you have the Nano 33 IoT which includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a 6-axis accelerometer for $18. The Nano BLE includes Bluetooth and a 9-axis accelerometer for $19. And finally, the Nano BLE Sense includes Bluetooth and a bunch of built-in sensors for barometer, humidity, temperature, and light, priced at $29.50.

One interesting feature common to all of the boards is that the pins are designed with what are called castellated pads, allowing them to be surface mounted directly to larger printed circuit boards.

Now for more projects! I was lucky enough to talk a little with Takashi Kaburagi this weekend about his self-solving Rubik’s cube and farting baseball projects we covered back in episode #121. He showed me another project of his called Human Controller. It’s over a year old, but it’s new to me so I figure it’s worth talking about.

The gist of it is that he made a simple remote control that triggers four small solenoids mounted on a headband worn by another person. You press the forward button, and a solenoid on the forehead vibrates, indicating which direction to go. The other solenoids are mounted on the left, right, and back of the head.

It’s incredibly silly, but a fun idea. And I have to think the person wearing the headband eventually comes back to slap the controller out of your hand.

Which is probably why he made a version two of this project, which allows you to control the headband over the internet. He has a demo showing how he was able to control a friend in New York from his office in Japan. It’s like telepresence robotics, but with a human. There’s probably business plan in here somewhere, but I hope we never see it.

On Thingiverse, there are three awesome collapsing toy sword designs by 3D Printing World. The first is a pirate sword. What’s especially cool about it is that the whole thing is a single, print-in-place design. You just pull it off the print bed and fling it out with a satisfying “thwick!”

The other two designs are a Star Wars-style lightsaber. One prints as a single piece, but it means that your handle and sword color are the same — which doesn’t seem quite right. Though, you could probably fix that with some paint.

As an alternative, he has a nifty version with a removable blade that you can print separately and drops into the handle with a little screw cap to keep it in place. It looks like a fun print, and who doesn’t need a lightsaber?

On Instructables, Franco Molina has this guide on making what he calls a drum cube. It’s a wonderfully analog drum machine that uses an Arduino Uno to store and playback patterns sent to different elements.

One pair of servos moves a couple of sticks that hit a snare drum made from a metal sheet and a Pringles can. The other moves a little foam block with piezo microphones attached that acts as a kick drum.

There’s also a hi-hat sound that’s not mechanical, made by a transistor-based noise generator circuit. All of it, though, is controlled by the Arduino and sent out over a single audio jack that can be run out to speakers.

A USB jack is also left exposed so that new patterns can be programmed directly in the Arduino code. I think it’s a great project and I could see a lot of ways to develop it further.

I have some tips and tools to share. On I Like to Make Stuff, Bob Clagett has an introduction video to saw blades. Cross-cut, rip cut, tooth count, dado blades, band saw blades, jig saw blades — a lot of useful information in under 5 minutes.

The latest Cool Tools podcast has a great interview with Maker Sean Michael Ragan. He has some great tips on adhesive backed sandpaper, twist clamps, and an awesome bench vise.

On Tested, Norm Chan has a great interview with maker Sophy Wong about her wearable tech projects. In particular, they go over her sci-fi space suit she offers some tips for getting started in wearable projects.

In the latest Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales newsletter, Gareth Branwyn goes over sculpting small wood pieces with a spring clamp holding your work for extra power and safety. There’s also a tip on using inexpensive silicone makeup brushes for applying glues and resins.

I also wanted to share that my most valuable tool at the Power Racing Series track last weekend at Maker Faire was my Dremel Versa Tip Precision Butane Soldering Torch. I’ve got a whole separate video on it that I’ll include in the show notes, but for soldering wires and sizing up heat shrink on a go-kart, outside and in the rain, it was perfect. A good value too at around $35.

For this week’s Digi-Key spotlight I encourage you to check out the video we just published looking at some of the coolest things we saw at Maker Faire Bay Area. From an electric excavator art car, to a newly built R2-D2, micro:bit controlled giant cardboard dinosaurs, to tiny little component cross-sections, you’re bound to find something that will inspire you.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a thumbs up or leave a comment. Let me know you guys are out there. It’s been a little quiet. You can also get on the Maker Update email newsletter to have these show notes emailed out to you automatically each week, along with a few bonus projects. A big thanks to my Patrons on Patreon and to Digi-Key electronics for sponsoring this show. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.